kingandy | Random Quizzage

Aphrodite/Eros

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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I don't know, it's only five questions but it's kind of sweet. Although it does apparently count Hercules as a greek god. Meh, whatever.

So I finished reading Monstrous Regiment yesterday (ha, while searching for that Amazon link I turned up this other book, which may well be the inspiration for the title...). It's an excellent read, though slightly disconcerting in that the central character is clearly based on

bacony.

I was a bit disappointed that everybody turned out to be female. I suppose Blouse wasn't, so it wasn't quite universal, but he just faded away when his part was done while everybody else got their "I@M A GRIRL TOO!!!1!" scene. Aside from anything else I'd been reading Jackrum's voice as Windsor Davies all the way through (though I had guessed, from his constant use of "I am not a XXX man" - I was just hoping all the date fudging in his record meant he was some kind of immortal, or an anthropomorphic personification of war, or the Duchess, or something, rather than just an old woman), and I'm not sure that any woman would be able to duplicate that ... I don't know, this is a world with active Gods and zombies and vampires, where Igors can perform motor neuron reattachment surgery with a needle and thread and sheer power of belief can move turkeys, so perhaps that particular aspect shouldn't be an issue. But from a narrative point of view ... everybody? I thought the point was "women are as good as men" rather than "women are better than men and they're everywhere look out!"

Perhaps that wasn't quite the point, though. Monstrous Regiment wasn't wholly about gender equality - Equal Rites is the place to go for that. This book was more about gender roles. How society forces you into a hole and your whole outlook can change just by changing your clothes. Part of it's about how society isn't divided into "men" and "women", not really. It's really divided into "people" and "women"... women are, in many ways, defined by the ways in which they are different from men. At least, that's how society subconsciously thinks, even in this enlightened age. It's like in those Saturday morning cartoons, where each character would have a defining feature, like "I'm sporty" or "I'm black", and one of them would be I'm female. Maybe that's why the Trolls, Vampires and Igors all had to be female, for the story to work... being a girl isn't all that you are, in the same way that being a sergeant or being a vampire isn't the whole of your being.

Or something.

Anyway. On a related subject, I didn't think the Watch characters were too clumsily inserted - it has been established that Vimes gets sent off on these things, and he didn't take the whole cast with him. The reporters from the Times were very logical and quite necessary to the story, though it wouldn't have hurt to have created a local reporter instead of sending deWorde himself out.

Also sad to see the Times have changed their business cards, even if they still haven't got the spelling right. I always liked "The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret".

Overall: Good read.